Known hair styling articles are typically composed of rigid materials and hinges. They are typically relatively complicated to assemble. Simpler hair styling articles are composed of stiff bendable wire or elastic material. These articles typically require force on the part of the user to fasten. A great disadvantage of all these hair styling articles, however, is that the number of hair styles they can be used to create is very limited. The prior art hair styling tools are style-specific; they either create pony tails or up-dos (referring to any style in which hair is lifted up and styled against the head), but not both. In addition, they are often clumsy to use, and the hair styles they can create are difficult to form. Also, many of the prior art hair styling articles easily break or wear out.